Christie Crime Digest-Volume IV

[Laxman]

81. What A Day That Was....

quite a day in court today. First Deb Gramacconi testifies that she told Christie about Kelly's involvement in the lane closures before he gave his famous "I know nothing" press conference, then Kelly's lawyer lets slip his client will say she told Christie about the lane closures before they took place (kaboom!) and then the top cop from the Port Authority says Baroni definitely lied in his "traffic study" testimony to the legislature. Wow, just wow.

P.A. cops: Baroni gave phony Bridgegate testimony to lawmakers

The Port Authority's police union's top cop testified Tuesday he was "quite upset" when former Port Authority executive Bill Baroni told a legislative committee in November 2013 that his department had requested a traffic study be done at the George Washington Bridge.

That's because Paul Nunziato, the president of the Port Authority's Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, said he knew what Baroni was saying at the time was a lie, Nunziato said.

"I never raised the issue," of a traffic study, he told the jurors in a federal courtroom on Tuesday afternoon .

Nunziatio said he and his second in command, Michael DeFlippis, were summoned to Baroni's office in the weeks before he was scheduled to appear before the legislative committee investigating the lane closures.

Baroni seemed "jittery and a little nervous'' during the meeting, Nunziatio said. Baroni, Gov. Chris Christie's top appointee at the bi-state agency, told the men he wanted to tell lawmakers the massive gridlock in Fort Lee was tied to a safety study that they themselves had requested on behalf of their members.

Former Christie aide says Baroni alerted her about Bridgegate emails

Deborah Gramiccioni, tapped to replace Port Authority deputy executive director Bill Baroni days before he was pushed out by the Christie administration, said she first got wind of the scandal that would become Bridgegate when she went to talk to him about the job she was taking.

It was just three months after the unannounced toll lane closures at the George Washington Bridge in September 2013 that had caused major traffic gridlock in Fort Lee, and there were growing questions by the state legislature about who had ordered the lanes shut down, and why.

"We discussed the lane closures," the former federal prosecutor said. She recalled Baroni telling her that he had heard that emails existed from Bridget Anne Kelly regarding the unauthorized lane changes, but he had not seen them.

"I was surprised to hear that," Gramiccioni testified. She told him to tell the governor's chief counsel and chief of staff because "it's better they hear it from you first."

The trial of Kelly and Baroni, who are charged with conspiracy and fraud in the politically-motivated lane closures continued on Tuesday in federal court in Newark with Gramiccioni on the stand.

A confidante and former deputy chief of staff for Gov. Chris Christie who recently nominated her to become a Superior Court judge, she told jurors about what she described as a growing realization that there was apparently more to Bridgegate than the bogus cover story put out by the Port Authority that it had been nothing more than a "traffic study."

Calls for a Talking Heads song: